Brannon Boren, the Keeper of Halo Secrets - 03/04/2003
Original Source - Last Accessed 07/04/2013. Posted by HBO on 03/04/2003. What department do you work in at Microsoft and what do you do? I work in the Franchise Development Group in Microsoft Games, but not as an employee of Microsoft (or of Bungie Studios). I have an office here and I work on site full time, but I'm a contractor. I've been here for a little over two years, except for a brief leave last Spring. My position involves contributing to the documentation and expansion of a game's universe beyond the scope of the game. I work on Halo, but also other titles. Along with Eric Trautmann, I write material for the Halo Story Bible, including describing how the technology works, creating background stories for characters, and detailing places and events. I also assist with development on the Halo novel line, and other Halo licensed products. I was asked to contribute and rewrite dialogue scripts for Halo, which is why my name appears in the credits. What other titles do you work on? Quantum Redshift, The Unseen, Crimson Skies, a few games I can't talk about, a few games I don't want to talk about, and a few games you'll never see. Are the circumstances that allowed you to arrive at this position a one-of-a-kind thing or is involving writers and "thinkers" the way to design games today? I can't discuss the composition of specific game teams within Microsoft, but I can speak about trends I see in the electronic game industry. There really should be a person hired to work exclusively on story, setting, characters. and dialogue, but that's not yet considered a necessary position on a game development team. Players now consider plot to be an essential part of their gaming experience. Should gaming companies start adding professional writers to their teams? I think so, but I'm biased. Maybe the more sophisticated and intelligent gamers (the kind who play Halo, for example) consider plot to be essential, but the game industry won't recognize the need for professional writers until gamers start voting with their wallets. What kind of background do you have? I grew up on the Space Coast of Florida, near Cape Canaveral. My Dad worked on the Gemini and Apollo programs, so I have always been exposed to astronomy, science fiction, and science in general. My formal education is in the biological sciences. I've found that very useful in my writing. I started out as a freelance writer in the tabletop RPG field. Creating characters and settings is part of RPG design, so I had the requisite skills to get started when I came to Xbox, but console games are very different. I've learned a great deal over the last couple of years, and it's gotten more interesting and more fun all the time. There are down sides, and bad days, but I probably can't get a lot of sympathy from you guys. ;-) What do you play RPG wise? I've always been partial to genres set in modern and future times: superheroes, spies, science fiction, etc.. In days gone by I played a lot of Champions. I've played almost every sci-fi RPG - even Traveller, way back in the "little black book" era. Oh, and I used to play a good deal of Battletech, which was a great bonus, considering that one of my first assignments at Microsoft was to write web content for Mechwarrior 4. Do you think there is enough interest to make the Halo universe into an RPG? I think Halo fans are eager for products that give them more access to the Halo Universe, (like novels for example) but that doesn't mean every good idea will actually become a product. We do pay attention to what fans are saying on sites like HBO, though. What books are you currently reading? Jennifer Government by Max Barry; No Logo by Naomi Klein; Lost Languages by Andrew Robinson; Bite Me! An Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Nikki Stafford; Beyond the Gate: the Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Stargate SG-1 by Keith Topping; and I just finished reading GURPS: Alpha Centauri by Jon F. Zeigler, a role playing book based on the award-winning computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. How much do you play Halo, and are you any good? We play two games a day, on average, and I'm definitely the worst player in my group. Eric routinely beats me 15 to... a very small number. I have no idea if I'm any good compared to "normal" people, but I'd like to think that several hundred games of Halo have imparted some degree of skill... What other games do you play? The Collective's Buffy the Vampire Slayer game is incredibly cool, though I'm still not able to defeat the Dark Slayer! It has enormous amounts of dialogue, cleverly integrated into the game. They got Chris Golden to write the plot, which was a smart move that paid off. SSX and SSX Tricky are two all-time favorites - I like the way the characters interact during races, and the fact that EA included biographical data and interviews. They also used great voice talent, and had good direction, which is something I'd like to see many game studios get better at. Are you a big Buckaroo Banzai fan? Yes, I'm a Buckaroo fan from way back, and I own the banzai-institute.net domain (where you'll find my website). My girlfriend is an even bigger fan, though, and has all the original press kit material, Banzai promotional items from the premiere, the BB viewmaster set, and all the World Watch One newsletters! We both own original copies of the very rare novel, which was recently reprinted, and which you should go buy. I've been meaning to do something really cool with the root home page of the domain, but time has been scarce. Since you've touched a number of games I'd like to hear your opinion of Bungie community compared to other games' fan base. Halo fans are incredible; so much energy and attention to detail. I know that I've got to do a great job on everything, because you guys will see the flaws right away. I'm a Halo fan too! How well did Bungie have the Halo story developed before you arrived on the scene? Halo had been in development for a long time before I came along. I had nothing to do with the storyline of the Halo game, though some things I wrote were included in the backstory/descriptions in the manual. My work on the scripts was a case of being in the right place at the right time. It was a chance to be involved in such a cool project, of course I jumped at it. OK, this may be bordering on Things You Cannot Talk About: Did Bungie have a fully fleshed out idea of where the Master Chief came from and how the SPARTAN program worked when you arrived on the scene? Bungie had mapped out everything they thought was relevant to the events of the game. That didn't include the Master Chief's childhood and the entire history of the SPARTAN program. There's a huge gap between what's needed for a good game and what's needed for a good novel. When we decided to go ahead with Halo fiction, we needed to fill in that gap. What part of the Halo Universe that you contributed to are you most proud of? Tough question... Two things: Technical data on the creation of AI beings (it's discussed briefly on page 235 of Halo: The Fall of Reach), and Dr. Catherine Halsey. Do you have any physical facts about the Halo bible you can tell us? You wouldn't want to drop it on your foot. What other cool Halo stuff can we expect to see in the future? Well, of course you've gotten the first look at the Halo action figures from Toy Fair by now. They rock! We've had the prototypes in the office, and I can't wait to get mine. I need Cortana on my desk guarding my PC from hackers while the Master Chief watches from atop the CPU for more tangible threats. HooYa! Joyride has done a great job for us, and you can all thank Doug Zartman at our end for shepherding the process along. Halo: The Fall of Reach has done very well too, thanks to the efforts of Eric Trautmann championing the idea of a novel line in the first place, and of course the very talented author, Eric Nylund. We'll see the publication of the next Halo novel in Spring, Halo: The Flood, and more great Halo products are in the works. Can't say more. Sorry! Do we have lots of plot goodies to look forward to with Halo 2 and beyond? I'm looking forward to Halo 2 with as much anticipation as any of you. I think we can all rest assured that Bungie will deliver the goodies. Yum! Category:Fiction Category:Interviews Category:Era: Halo Combat Evolved Category:Brannon Boren Interviews